The Calgary Flames (2-8-2) will travel to Music City to take on the Nashville Predators (4-6-2) in early afternoon Saturday NHL action.

Calgary is looking at a team that has been decimated defensively.

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The Preds have given up the second-most goals in even-strength hockey (36).

Their top playing line of Ozzy Wiesblatt-Michael McCarron-Cole Smith has given up the lowest Expected Goals Against (xGA) for lines that have played at least 74 minutes of 5v5 hockey with 1.7, but have actually given up four goals.

Nashville makes up for that by having the sixth-best penalty-kill, which does not bode well for a Calgary team that is 7-for-28 in the power play.

Going back to even-strength hockey, despite the Predators’ time on the ice ranking eighth in the season, their shots on opposing nets rank 14th. It might make you want to say Dustin Wolf is in for an easy afternoon, but Nashville is 10th in Scoring Chances For (SCF) in all situations on the ice.

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The Flames’ offence is kind of the other way around: Their time on the ice in even-strength hockey is ranked 11th, but their total shots are ranked sixth. Unfortunately, those shots are clearly not productive because Calgary’s Scoring Chances For (SCF) are ranked 17th.

Calgary’s defence hasn’t been too sharp either as they’ve given up the sixth-most goals in even-strength situations (30).

Dustin Wolf has been back on his A-game though, doing the heavy work by having back-to-back games of more than 30 saves for the first time this season.

We already established Nashville is not top level at even-strength hockey.

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And their power play is ranked at a dismal 31st. That’s right. Second-last.

But with Calgary’s penalty-kill time on the ice being the third-longest in the league (74:43), the Preds are probably counting on drawing penalties to get as much power play time as possible.

The key for Calgary: Don’t commit penalties and stay out of the box.

Keep shooting at the Predators’ net and hope you get something. Although, it is easier said than done considering Nashville’s goalie Juuse Saros is one of only two netminders in the league to have started at least 10 games and registered a save percentage of at least 0.900.